The aurora and noctilucent cloud
are not very well served by usenet, however, the following newsgroups are
certainly worthwhile checking from time to time, particularly when major
activity or storms are occurring:

Electronic mailing lists offer a
convenient way of distributing information and creating discussion groups
on particular subjects. If you are new to the use of electronic mailing
lists then further information can be found at:

Moderately busy discussion list on general astronomy
but often contains threads on the aurora, particulary after large
displays. To subsribe to this list send an e-mail to listserve@uwwvax.uww.edu
with "subscribe astro-l {your e-mail address}" in the message body
(i.e, not in the message subject field).

Most digital mobile cellphones now
have an sms (Short Message Service) facility. Often these messages are
free to receive though it's best to check with your provider first.
A growing number of cellphone companies now issue users with an e-mail
address which can be ported, normally via a website, direct to a cellphone
handset. Using this e-mail address to subscribe to selected IPS or SEC
alerts turns a mobile handset into a very efficient alert device. However,
SMS messages are restricted to a maximum size of 150 characters so the
facility does have limitations. WAP enabled cellphone handsets can also
be used to collect messages from the IPS and SEC lists and do not have
the message size restriction of SMS.

Solar Terrestrial Despatch have
developed commercially available 'Space Weather' software for the
PC. Of particular interest to the aurora observer is the 'Advanced
Auroral Activity and Space Weather Monitoring Software'. This package
fetches a wide-range of key solar, auroral and geomagnetic, real-time and
forecast data from a variety of internet sources and presents them in a
well designed custom 'browser' format. The software is highly configurable
and also has a very lively, informative discussion forum. A freeware version
is currently available. Download information can be found at: